The war council thrummed with an undercurrent of tension, the gathered rebel commanders projecting a mantle of grim determination across the dimly lit chamber. Strategic holograms bathed their features in a phantasmal kaleidoscope of hard angles and vague shadows as Victoria paced before them, coiled with conviction.
"We cannot allow this blatant act of aggression against one of our own to go unanswered," she proclaimed, fists clenching with smoldering outrage. "The Ilagra have not merely crossed the line this time - they have obliterated it."
Murmurs of uneasy assent rippled through the assembled officers. While none could deny the nightmarish recounting of Emily's ordeal at the hands of the regime resonated like an atrocity begging for reprisal, their expressions betrayed a cloud of lingering doubt.
"With all due respect..." Arkan, a wizened veteran with a perpetual squint borne from years squinting through a sniper's scope, leaned forward with measured gravitas. "While the torture inflicted upon our sister-in-arms was an abominable violation, provoking an open declaration of war against the Ilagra over it could prove...disastrous."
Victoria wheeled on him, emerald eyes blazing with indignant fury. Before she could unleash a blistering rebuttal, another resigned voice piped up from the council's periphery.
"As much as it pains me, I must concur." Sithe, the youngest and most idealistic of their strategists, offered his dissent with a grimace of dismay. "From a pragmatic standpoint, our reconnaissance on the Ilagra's militarized capabilities vastly overshadows our own. To defiantly charge their fortifications could result in an unmitigated slaughter on our end."
The auburn-haired resistance leader's expression soured into a rictus of disgust and disbelief as the first furtive currents of dissent lapped at the foundations of her resolve. With measured strides, she stalked across the amphitheater towards one of the hovering haptic consoles awaiting its next tactical simulation.
"Are you so enthralled
with survival at any cost that you've abandoned even the most fundamental of human decency?" Victoria's words hissed from between gritted teeth as her fingers danced over the console's haptic keys. "We have all sacrificed and bled in order to forge a future free of the Ilarga's oppressive rule. And now you would cower in fear, leaving our captured soldiers and civilians to endure the horrors Emily endured firsthand?"
With a sweeping gesture, she triggered a holographic rendering of the Ilagra's most infamous black citadel - an obsidian war-machine composed of sheer, angled planes and protruding armored spines bristling with heavy ordnance emplacements. The eldritch construction blotted out the war room, its emerald-bathed monolithic shadow stretching in all directions like a malignant growth of architectural malice.
"You all know what this is! Not only are they unrepentant sadists, they are constantly building their arsenal" Victoria continued, punctuating her tirade with emphatic gestures towards the grim hologram. "They are Warlords who derive pleasure from inflicting suffering so infinite in its depravity that I cannot even describe their insane cruelty. This is no longer a conflict of mere territorial ambition or conquest - they have forcibly dragged us into all-out Armageddon through their soulless perversions!"
A rapt hush fell over the gathered commanders, the weight of their leader's fury and conviction an almost palpable psychic miasma pressing down upon them. It was Sithe who finally mustered the courage to speak, his voice uneasy and tinged with guilt.
"Your...passion is as unquestionable as your righteousness, Victoria," he offered hesitantly. "But what of the...inconsistencies in Emily's testimony? There are accounts and deviances I cannot help but...try as I might to reconcile her claimed timeline, certain pieces do not align properly."
At these words, Victoria felt a surge of heat coloring her cheeks with indignant disbelief. To dare cast even the faintest aspersions on the integrity of her comrade and lover's experience was akin to blasphemy in her eyes.
"Are you questioning Emily's credibility?" The words emerged as a guttural growl, heavy with warning. "After enduring psychological and physical defilement beyond any reasonable scope of human comprehension?"
"Of course not!" Sithe instantly raised placating hands, his pale features pinched with dismay at prompting his superior's ire. "I'm merely stating that in the throes of such an unendurable trauma, details could understandably become...distorted. Corrupted by the very violation of her mind and body, if you will."
Rather than soothing Victoria's affront, his mitigating appeals only stoked the simmering furnace of her outrage. With a narrow-eyed glare, she turned away from the haptic console to sweep an accusatory stare across the stunned officers in her wake.
"This conversation is over," she decreed with frigid finality. "Emily endured unimaginable torture at the hands of those Ilagra. Any perceived 'inconsistencies' in her accounting are born from the scars they inflicted on her psyche - wounds that we can resolve through counseling and empathy, not interrogation and doubt."
A pregnant pause billowed with taut silence until the rebellion leader leveled each of them with a stare burning like azure wildfire.
"We are going to war," Victoria's words sliced through the oppressive hush with the inevitable finality of a missile launch order. "Prepare your battalions, reinforce our strongholds, and commit to the crucible of combat. Because any man or woman who dare show further reservations..." Her vision shifted, gaze fracturing with a glimpse of cold human mechanics behind the curtain, "...will be considered traitors complicit in the Ilagra's tortures."
Her condemnation hung in the air with palpable menace as she spun on her heel, the armored panels of her cloak billowing with banners of onyx shadow cast by the bleak holographic fortress. A storm was coming, a requiem of ordinance in the key of her battle cry.
As Victoria exited the war room, her steps thrummed with the ironshod conviction fed by the righteous blaze of retribution she intended to unleash upon the Ilagra. There would be no more half-measures, no more compromises or placation of hesitant dissenters deterred by the scope of what needed doing.
Through the elegantly curved transparisteel windows lining the corridor, she gazed out upon the glimmering void of stars...and swore to offer it up as a burning pyre consuming all her enemies. The vanguard rush of her boots echoed through the shadowed halls with martial cadence - an acceleration towards an unavoidable destiny written in starfire and lamentation.
Because Victoria had sworn an oath on the flames of her devotion to Emily, and by the celestial hells or even old earth, no force would be permitted to sway her from that course. The depraved psychopaths who had inflicted irreversible trauma upon her beloved comrade and lover would soon come to know the cold edge of her fury firsthand.
Even as she strode forth to catalyze her rebellion's descent into an apocalyptic bloodletting, Victoria could not help the ember of triumph flickering deep within her breast. It radiated outwards in a sanguine flare of euphoric conviction, the certainty that her crusade stood as Emily's final exaltation after her own grievous fall.
The Ilagra's grave sin had secured their mutually-assured destruction - and to Victoria, the revenge she coveted, the deliverance of stark justice she would deliver with cold finality...it would be a reckoning worth any sacrifice.
Tonight, she would fall into a deep slumber, the warmth of Emily's wounded form cradled protectively against her heart. And tomorrow, as dawn crested over her rebellion's burning horizon...the galaxy itself would tremble.